


hand up to the moon

by petragem



Category: Philadelphia Story (1940)
Genre: F/F, Multi, lowkey OT4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21968872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petragem/pseuds/petragem
Summary: The invitation arrives in the afternoon on a Wednesday.  Mike watches Liz turn the envelope over in her hands, brow furrowed, and carefully slide a heavy cream-colored card out onto the table.  Her lips turn up at the corners.Mike folds his paper, irritably.  "Who's that from, the king of England?""No, better."  Liz takes one last look, and hands him the card.  "Dinah Lord."
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	hand up to the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FairestCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairestCat/gifts).



> Happy yuletide! I saw your prompts and latched on hard to Dinah as queer, and then this happened. Hope you enjoy!

The invitation arrives in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Mike watches Liz turn the envelope over in her hands, brow furrowed, and carefully slide a heavy cream-colored card out onto the table. Her lips turn up at the corners.

Mike folds his paper, irritably. "Who's that from, the king of England?"

"No, better." Liz takes one last look, and hands him the card. "Dinah Lord."

Her name is scrawled out in gold, lots of extra loops and fluff. Mike sees "Mother and Sister of" and "requests the honor" and "happy occasion." Mike sees a hand scrawled note on the bottom, expensive looking black ink, some smudges. It says, "Please come, Mike. It'll be a ball, better than Tracy's. (Our secret, shhh.) Come a day early, XO, D."

***

Mike makes a few feeble protests—he’s on deadline for his next novel, Liz is hard at work on a new commission—but. In the end, they pack their bags, and go. 

It’s a strange sort of deja vu, headed back to Philadelphia, another Lord wedding. Invited this time, no false pretenses to be found. The door thrown open at their arrival, with Tracy kissing his cheek, slipping her hand into Liz’s. Leading them down the light airy hall to a sitting room, to inquiries on their health, on their work. On whether they’d like a cold drink, or a hot tea.

They haven’t been together, not like this, not all of them, since before the war.

Mike greets Dexter with a handshake, a nod.

Dinah floats into the room, grinning, walking on air.

A blonde follows her and Macaulay Connor has seen a lot of beautiful women in his life, but he reckons this one--this one is the most stunning, the most lovely, he's ever seen.

Liz clears her throat.

"Wonderful," Tracy crows, clapping her hands together. "Everybody's here. Pat, meet Macaulay, Mike for short, and Liz. Mike, Ms. Imbrie, this is Pat, Dinah's intended.”

"Your fiancée is a _woman?_ " Mike asks, voice lifting peculiarly. 

"Yes, darling," Tracy cuts in, breezing past him, dropping a kiss on Dinah's head. "It's perfectly acceptable, you know. All the English are doing it."

Dinah beams. Sticks her hands in the pockets of her trousers, and rocks back on her heels.

Pat offers her hand to Liz, then to Mike. "Patricia Dupont Bayard, officially. Pat to everyone else."

“'Bayard," Mike says, apprehensively. "Are you of the Wilmington Bayards?"

Pat levels him with a withering gaze. "Formerly of the Wilmington Bayards, currently of the We've Disowned Our Own Flesh and Blood Bayards. How do you do?"

Mike thinks of war, of terror, of near-constant battle. Of the special brand of fear only Lord women, and their fiancées, can inspire.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he settles on, finally. “If you make Dinah happy, and you’ve got Tracy’s approval, that’s more than good enough for me.”

“Of course she does, Mike, don’t be silly,” Tracy says. Dexter raises his eyebrows, just slightly. Liz glares at him, exasperated. 

Dinah gazes at Pat, totally and thoroughly oblivious.

“Good, that’s settled then,” Pat proclaims. Turns to face Liz. “Anyway, it’s going to be marvelous—I’ve heard so much about you. How much Dinah wanted you both to be here. She said it was a requirement, for a Lord wedding.”

"And Uncle Willie?" Liz asks. Mike feels rather than hears the note of trepidation in her voice.

"Not invited!" chirps Dinah.

Tracy looks pained for a moment. Says: "We didn't want--" and "He's not--" Throws up her hands. "Well, you know Uncle Willie."

"We do indeed," Liz agrees.

***

They’re led to the patio, where they’re served luncheon, and then glass after glass after glass of champagne. Mike blinks, and the sky is changing, losing light. He realizes they’re a solid thirty minutes past sunset. He realizes that they’re all wildly, incandescently drunk. He realizes: that was Dinah’s point, in getting them here early. 

He watches Dinah and Pat tip their heads close together, whispering. Watches them slip away, hand in hand, in the vague direction of what he recalls as the pool house. 

Tracy and Liz are deep in conversation. Liz’s hand rests on Tracy’s thigh, and Tracy has an arm draped over the back of Liz’s chair. Their voices lilt up and down, laughing, chatting. Dexter nudges his foot under the table. Mike startles, and turns to look at him, confused. 

“Everything okay over there?” Dexter asks him. 

Mike burps, and shakes his head, _no_. “C.K. Dexter Haven,” he starts. Burps again. “Tracy hasn’t talked to me, not _really_ talked to me, not about anything important, since I came back from the war.”

Dexter shifts in his seat, considers. ”Think she took your enlistment harder than mine, to be honest," Dexter says. Inches closer. Rests his chin on his hand.

Mike sighs, looks down at the bottom of his empty glass. Wonders how something meant to be flattering can feel so emasculating. "Probably thought I'd make a mess of it over there and you'd come back fine."

"No, I don't think that's it." Dexter crosses an ankle over his knee, tilts toward him to face him head on. "I think Tracy believes you have more to offer to the world than I do, more potential. There's your writing, yes, but it's also just _you._. You connect with people in a way that I don't, or can't, maybe. Tracy loves me and all, but I think she thinks the world would be a worse off place without you than it would without me.”

Mike frowns. That’s not it, that can’t be true, but then, he gets distracted, again, by the peal of Tracy’s laugh. When he looks at his drink, it’s filled to the rim again. He stands up.

“Excuse me, excuse me. I’d like to make a toast,” Mike announces. A bit of champagne sloshes over the edge of his glass. He steadies himself. Raises his voice. “To Dinah, and Pat. To love, and old friends.”

They all raise their glasses, and clink. Mike likes the pretty, reassuring noise it makes. When he looks up, Tracy’s staring at him, a glint in her eye that Mike feels like is familiar, but he can’t imagine why. Liz tugs him down to his seat. “Let’s go to bed, Mike,” she says, leaning in close, right against his ear. He nods, and closes his eyes, and kisses her, blindly. Thinks he manages to hit somewhere in the general vicinity of her ear. 

He opens his eyes. Looks at Tracy, at Dexter. They stare back at him, private and intense. Mike says: “Are you coming?”

Mike says: “Please.”


End file.
